We live in the era of technology and artificial intelligence, so it comes naturally to use your smartphone for time and work management. Your phone is synced to a laptop or tablet so you have complete access to your schedule, meetings, events, and tasks. However, when you’re away and your battery is low it becomes more of a burden than a tool.
There are plenty of reasons why you should ditch your phone and try a printable calendar to boost your productivity. Below you can find the advantages of printed calendars and how to use them to the fullest.
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Why You Should Use a Paper Calendar
Before we begin, you should know that a suitable calendar needs to have a balanced design, which emphasizes weekends but doesn’t use too much color to distract you. It only needs to capture your attention. You can find monthly printable calendar designs on websites such as CalendarTable. Here’s why you should use a paper calendar instead of your phone.
- You decide how visible it is. You position the calendar at your desk depending on available space and how often you need to consult it. The optimal place is somewhere on a wall, on the left or right of your computer screen, at eyesight level.
- It lets you have an overview of your monthly available time. You can plan and see how long a project lasted. You can calculate how much is left until the end of the month or how many working days you can exploit.
- Your assistant has access to your time information. It’s essential to have others involved in your time. If someone calls to plan a meeting, your assistant will know if you’re available or busy that day.
- You can check your time in real-time. If you just got to work or from lunch break, you have instant access to your time. You don’t need to log in, press the security code or wait for the phone to load your calendar.
- Let’s organize your work. You can designate colors for meetings, conferences, or projects. You have the freedom to mark your busy time so that you can know instantly why you’re busy.
Above all, there’s no risk of data loss or low battery.
How to Use a Printable Calendar to Boost Your Productivity
- Keep the calendar updated. Develop a morning ritual to consult the calendar, mark a project or event completed, and write down upcoming events. If you have a vacation or there’s a National Holiday in line, mark them as unavailable for work. Also, check your calendar for the next day when you leave work.
- Organize your calendar use. If your work involves meetings, deadlines, conferences to attend, or other business events, designate colors for them. Keep the color scheme unaltered, so that you can know why you’re busy on a certain day. Also, make sure all colors are visible and there’s no discrepancy in the importance of your busy days.
- Don’t overcharge it. Your calendar is your productivity and time-planning tool, not a to-do list. The more you overcharge it with information, the less you’ll understand out of it. You can use your agenda for tasks and responsibilities and make references such as See calendar or See agenda.
- Take a pic. If your work involves making trips, take a picture of the calendar and carry it with you on your phone. Make it easy to reach and designate a folder for your calendar. This way you can tell business partners or potential clients if you’re available for a meeting soon.
- Evaluate your work. Keep the old calendar when a new month arrives. This way you can evaluate your work and see if you’ve spent too much time on a project. By looking into how you made use of your past time, you can optimize future work and reorganize your tasks and approach towards specific projects.
So, the Printable Calendar Wins
According to a survey, decorative and other calendar sales grew by 8% and reached $65 million, despite the millennial technology age. Printable calendars are easy to use and don’t require many clicks to write down the duration of a project.
As each tool has its pros and cons, calendars are a bit hard to share with others and they make it impossible to move data. You have limited space and you need to write down by hand recurring events. However, they visibly boost your productivity by allowing you to organize your time and to have constant access to it. The calendar also motivates you to constantly optimize your work and waste less time than before. Productivity is about attention and time management. The paper calendar contributes to these just by laying on your desk wall.
